


like sacrifices in their trim

by lalaietha



Series: Renegotiations of Fate [9]
Category: Valdemar Series - Mercedes Lackey
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Tylendel deserved better, Vanyel deserved better, arguing with canon, life chewed both of these boys up and spat them out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-06
Updated: 2019-11-06
Packaged: 2021-01-24 01:09:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21329764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalaietha/pseuds/lalaietha
Summary: In which Yfandes clears what she feels is some unfinished business.
Relationships: Vanyel Ashkevron/Tylendel Frelennye
Series: Renegotiations of Fate [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/15084
Comments: 9
Kudos: 76





	like sacrifices in their trim

**Author's Note:**

> About a week or so after the previous fic; Vanyel's ability to share a bet has been erratic, and so their little den-area has two. The night before this one was Difficult.

When Tylendel woke up, Van was gone. The little room was empty, the bed-nest tidied and made in a way that was as clear a message as any that Van didn't intend to come back to it for a while, and the filled skin of water was gone. The magelight glowed over the bedside. 

Tylendel sat up, leaned forward and threaded his fingers through his hair, sighing. And then wincing as frustration built, and anger, and started to send its iron spike through his left temple. He needed an outlet, or a respite, and with Van's backslide of the last week, he didn't think he was likely to get the latter. He was tempted to ask 'Fandes where Van was; tempted to follow his own echoes and see if he could find him. But that would be stupidity: the state he was in, it would end in a fight at best, and something more . . . damaging at worst. 

He swore under his breath and half-threw himself to his feet, pulling tunic on over rumpled shirt and throwing his cloak haphazard around his shoulders before yanking on his boots and stalking out to the wider caverns. If Van didn't want to be found, he wouldn't be by the pool or with Hyrryl, so Tylendel felt perfectly safe in seeking out the shaman for himself. 

He hadn't figured out if most of the rest of the kyree were sensitive, or whether, being canid, they simply read body-language better than most humans. As he passed, though, they all gave him wide berth without making it look like they were, in apparent consideration for his state of mind. It rankled, but he knew well enough that right now everything and anything would rankle, regardless of what it was. 

Hyrryl looked up, as Tylendel approached, head tilted in curiousity more like a dog than a wolf - not that, granted, Tylendel had all that much experience with wolves up close. _:Something is wrong?:_ she asked, as the other kyree with her (little grey female; Tylendel either didn't know or just couldn't remember her name) got up and trotted away, as if to give them privacy. 

"Yes, and no," Tylendel replied. He drew a careful breath, and then let it out without saying anything, at a loss for how to explain. The headache worsened and he winced, hand going without thought to his temple to rub there. "I . . . is there somewhere that you need something . . . taken apart, moved, destroyed, whatever, that you can still shield well enough not to give us away?" 

He expected her to ask why. He had already thought how to try to explain, and not come away with anything that didn't reveal it for what it was: _my control is not as good as it should be, and it can't be, and if I don't find an outlet I'm going to trip and break something in the caves eventually. _The destructive impulse remained ugly to his eyes and to his mind, and he was no more proud of it now than he had been when he'd been Chosen. 

The thought of that made him wince again, but that was covered, he suspected, by the headache. 

But instead of saying anything, Hyrryl merely said, :Yes,: and got up, pacing her way over and past him, clearly expecting him to follow. 

She was heading up, and out of the caves. He followed. 

*****

In winter, the trees blocking the stream were meaningless; in summer, they would both stop and foul the water-flow that needed to go to . . . .somewhere or other. Truth told, Tylendel didn't listen to much of that part of the tale. Only that (now that she had walked there) Hyrryl's magic would cover his traces, and that the knot of three downed trunks needed to be otherwhere than where it was. 

The storms were never as bad now as they had been before Gala came (the pain fueled the anger that fueled the Gift), for there was no longer any Mage-Gift to work with the Fetching. He felt the trill over the channel, burned closed as Van's had been blasted open, but, as always, there was nothing at all in answer. It was only with the simpler Gift that he tore the trees to shreds and then down to dust, to fall all over the snow and be washed away with the melting. 

He poured anger into it, and grief, and fear, and pain. Frustration and everything that wasn't fair, wasn't meet, wasn't useful. And it wasn't enough. How could anything be enough? But then, it was enough in one important way: by the time it left him panting, head aching in an entirely different way from the base of his skull, as he leaned forward, hands resting above his knees, he no longer felt like a kettle welded shut and set over the fire, waiting to explode. 

It was snowing again: he could feel the flakes settling in his hair and cold on the back of his neck. He closed his eyes. It was strange that changing the pressure-headache of before for the reaction headache eating his skull now would be a relief, but it was. 

The equine snort behind him made him start nearly out of his skin, to standing, hand going to the sword at his belt until he saw that it was Yfandes, white-on-white and blue eyes. He let out an explosive breath and shook his hair out of his eyes. "Kernos' balls and Astrea's arse, horse," he snapped. "You could have given me some warning." It was unfairly irritable, and he'd've deserved it if she'd shot back, but instead she only shook snow out of her mane. 

_:I did,:_ she said. _:You're deaf to everything when you do that. As well you know.: _ And Tylendel sighed, running his fingers through his hair and melting some of the snow with his hands' heat. 

"True enough," he admitted. "What's wrong? Is Van - " 

_:No,:_ she interrupted him, taking a few steps closer. _:No, he's still . . . thinking.:_

Tylendel looked around and said, "I just needed to - "

_:I know,:_ she interrupted. He cast her a suspicious look. She sounded entirely too thoughtful, and too gentle. Un-Yfandes like, in truth, especially given she'd let his undeserved bad temper with her pass. 

"Why are you out here in the snow, then, lady?" he asked. "The scenery isn't that pretty, when it's this cold." 

Yfandes looked at him for a long moment, out of blue eyes. Tylendel had to look away before she did, as the knot in his chest tightened and the memory of Gala overlaid itself on the vision of Yfandes now - 

_:Gala erred,: _Yfandes said, at last, and kicked him in the chest with words as much as she could have with her hooves. He felt winded. He took a step or two back - no, stumbled a step or two back, and tried to collect his wits from around the pain, and the sting in his eyes. 

"Now is _not_ a good - " he started, but she cut him off again. 

_:Stop it,:_ she said, sounding much more like Yfandes now, more like Van's acidic white lady. Tylendel brushed his fingers over his eyes, found them wet, and then pinched the bridge of his nose._:Sit down,: _she went on, and when he didn't move, she nudged him firmly over to a fallen log still left from his decimation, and then nudged him again to sit down. He did wrap his cloak around him, but without thought. He could only look at her. 

_:Gala erred,:_ she said again. _:She made a mistake. She was young - as young as you, in many ways. And she made the same mistake - she acted without counsel, in her moment of pain and rage and betrayal. We are not infallible, Tylendel. Not by half. We make mistakes, we have regrets, and we fail. She should not have done what she did, and we - I - would have stopped her if I could have.: _

His chest hurt, his throat closed and his eyes burned. He couldn't see her well, even before he looked away, wiping at his eyes with the heel of his hand. The world was tilted half to the left and he, he had no grounding again. If he were less tired he might have worried at the explosion she might have provoked, but he wasn't; he was so tired now that all he could do was look to her and stare, and feel tears on his cheeks. He thought to question her timing, wry or bitter; he thought to say something cruel, or harsh, but the words disappeared and he was left with nothing but a chest that hurt like someone was reaching in to rip his heart out. 

"Why are you telling me this?" he said, hoarsely. And thought _Gala, Gala, I'm sorry. Oh my heart oh my love, I'm so sorry._ And he could see her, white and fair and terrible, and the look in her eyes with the words echoing in his mind. 

_":I do not know you. You are not my Chosen.:" _

And Van's eyes, as he came down, as he looked at 'Fandes herself and waited for her to do the same, in the midst of all the carnage he'd caused. 

She erred, Yfandes said. The sob was clawing its way up, strangling at his throat. Yfandes took another few steps forward and settled into the snow beside him, so that her eyes were at level with his again. 

_:We keep secrets,: _she said, quietly._ :I'm not keeping that one anymore. Because Van needs you. Because it's true. Because you needed Healing, too.: _She blinked, and he realized he was crying and there was nothing he could do, as the world picked him up and shook him, as reality turned itself upside down and the truth burned at him, as she told it, because Companions cannot lie mind-to-mind. _:Because I love you, too.:_

Grief took him for a while, then, and tore him apart, the present echoing the past as he cried himself out, man in place of boy, and Yfandes in place of his beloved Gala that he'd lost. 

***

Van was waiting in the room when Tylendel came back inside, chilled and exhausted, empty of much more than thoughts and grief. Hollow, somehow, but - 

Lanced of poison, maybe. 

Van sat on the chest, and looked up as he came in. He was pale, but he seemed calm. As he thought that, it struck Tylendel how he must look - and what Van must have felt from him. Tylendel looked away and drew in a breath. 

"I . . . was out," he said, lamely. "'Fandes - " 

"She told me," Van said, quiet, concern in his eyes. Tylendel had to fight not to laugh. _Oh, ashke, I'm supposed to be fixing_ you. _I'm supposed to worry for you, not you for me. What a mess I make of everything - _

Mistake. It sat on him, settled onto his shoulders, the weight oddly freeing even as it burned all over again. Mistake. Gala made a mistake. Gala erred. Because she was dead, it could never be undone. Tylendel had erred, in madness and grief, and so well suited had they been she'd followed him in that. It was almost funny. It was hell. 

Van put aside the mending he'd been doing, and didn't say anything. Tylendel threw off his cloak and threw it down. 

"Why do they do this?" he asked, softly. "The gods." He scrubbed a hand over his face. "Why us?" Van looked down, at his own hands, at the fading of scars new and old on his arms. "Why this way? There has to have been another way, ashke." 

And Van's mouth twisted: bitter, and pain, and memory of worse. "Does it matter?" he asked in counter, and Tylendel looked away from him. He heard Van stand up, and looked back, his vision going blurred again. 

"I'm so sorry, ashke," he said, hoarse. "This - this is me, my doing. If I hadn't - " 

Van shook his head, pressing his eyes closed and taking a breath before he said, "If you hadn't, this son of a bitch might be halfway to Haven already," he said, blunt. "And because I wouldn't be what I am, both of us dead, like Lissandra and - " he bit off before he said Savil, because the name hurt. "Maybe there's your answer, ashke. Maybe this is the price, for Valdemar." And he half-laughed, half-retched a sob, and added, "And if you weren't - oh, ashke, who else could have stopped me?" 

Tylendel couldn't see worth a damn as he brushed his fingers over Van's cheek, but he didn't have to: he rested his hand on behind Van's neck, their foreheads touching as they leaned one against the other, Van's grip on Tylendel's arm tight enough to hurt. 

"You know how this is going to end," he said, soft, just above a whisper. He felt Van nod. They both knew: they both had to know. A mage who could spring a trap to catch Van as he had wouldn't be stopped by less than Final Strike. And the chances were agonizingly good that Tylendel and Yfandes both would have to leave him. To take word back. Because even once the bastard was dead, there would be - 

The Guard would need to come. 

"Wait for me," he said. "If - if you can. Please." 

Van only nodded again, and then both of them were beyond words.

**Author's Note:**

> And for the final record, brief not!fic: 
> 
> In the end Tylendel was able to reach out to a very weakly Gifted priest near the Guard outpost and _pour_/dump all the required knowledge into the poor old man's head; when Yfandes went back to Van, she took 'Lendel with her. 
> 
> Leareth was not best pleased by this. 
> 
> The fight still came very close to killing them, and in the end it only didn't because while Leareth was mustering himself to fend of what he expected would be a weakened Final Strike, Tylendel ripped his heart out - he wasn't expecting pure mind-magic. The explosive fallout of Leareth's death still almost annihilated all three of them. 
> 
> They were reported dead, because Lendel put his foot down _hard_ and they retired to k'Treva, where Van messed around with music and Lendel wrote scathing political treatises, although given all that both of them had put themselves through they only lived about ten more years before dying in their sleep. 
> 
> The end.


End file.
